You write well, Chris. I enjoy reading these, inasmuch as I enjoy good writing. Can't say I enjoy the immediate subject matter, but it's pretty generally well worth an unflinching gaze or two.
You have a good argument to make, and you've made it. You've convinced me: as a society, we are increasingly ruled by LARPers who judge themselves and each other on essentially aesthetic criteria divorced from any original meaning of the roles they play. The symbolic superstructures of our institutions have come unmoored from their earthy foundations, and the next tectonic hiccup will render it all disjoint rubble.
It's an acute diagnosis, in every sense of the word. You've done an admirable job of describing the symptoms, over and over again, in each of these posts. Occasionally I feel like you're making progress toward discovering the root causes of this illness. (I don't mean to imply that I have those answers. I can speculate and point at things, but it's a big subject and well beyond the intended scope of this comment.) But I don't see much in the way of a cure, here. Hold the line, sure. Ridicule them whenever you can. Fair enough, but that's all pretty much the consensus position of (say) the Babylon Bee. I'm not convinced it will suffice to save us. The emperor may be naked, but his army still holds most of the pointy sticks, and they are genuinely sharp on the business end.
I hope you're working on a book. It would be a good book, maybe even an important book. But, with all your eloquent iterations over the problem, I think it's only about half written. Press on!
This is a great comment, and it points to a bunch of problems that I know about in the story I'm trying to tell. I don't have much of an immediate cure to offer, and I don't think anyone can offer it. A cure, if we manage it, will be distributed, it'll be social and cultural more than it's political, and it will take decades of slow turning through the change created by millions of individual and institutional choices.
My impression is that the ifs are bigger than anything anyone knows, right now. Among a thousand other available examples, maybe we muddle through the Covid-19 vaccine debacle, and slide away into the escape of second-generation vaccines, and there's never a reckoning. Maybe a majority of the country goes on being grateful for the mRNA vaccines, and feeling glad that government protected us by forcing people to take them. Or maybe enough people forcefully speak truth that it breaks through, we see that we've harmed ourselves, we see that arbitrary authority has harmed us, and the emergence of unavoidable truth forces a broad rethinking of the authoritarianism we've come to take for granted. Edward Dowd has been arguing that a wave of insurance industry data is coming that will switch the lights on – we'll see. But the number of possible futures is large, the questions are enormous, and contingency rules.
Right now we could tell SO MANY similar stories about contingency and forks in the road ahead. Energy, economics, the military and diplomatic power of the United States, the future of family ties and social structure: It beats the shit out of me. I see quite a few paths to darkness and collapse, and a few paths to a future I would want to live in.
This early essay was an attempt at one big piece of the root cause:
As to your introductory matter, I try to avoid gums (guar, xanthan, etc.). They don't sit well with me. I find Trader Joe's is the best place to find groceries without too much stuff, at least I can usually find some things there that I tolerate well. Canola (rapeseed) oil may be fine for most people, but it doesn't go down well with my stomach. Not a fan of organic.
As to your substance I really think the rallying cry of our time is the simple question, "What is a woman?" To deny having a position on natural rights simply evades the question. A good litigator would hammer the witness with, "Do you believe all humans have certain rights? Who or what gives them these rights?" etc. until I got her real answer. "When does an individual get these rights? Do you believe that people are responsible for their own actions, or are we predestined to act as our ancestors or evolution trained us? What is the difference between a human and an animal as to rights and responsibilities?"
It's sad that we need to be asking these questions, but as I say, I think the most straightforward and simple question is, "What is a woman?" Never stop asking that. Hammer them with it.
"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Draining all meaning from every word, hollowing out all institutions and the realities are world is governed by (whether they choose to acknowledge that or not), allows anything & everything to be filled with whatever GlobalCorpInc decides the narrative must be at that moment. I fear this is literally going to drive folks mad. Humanity is being hollowed out as well, as we drift, formless, in the void. Is this the fulfillment of “You will own nothing and be happy?” To become nothing?
God created. This work being undertaken by so many forces in the world, is the evil opposite. An uncreating, if you will.
We must not let them get away with this. Stand and fill your life with meaning and purpose and anchor it to the eternal, which cannot be erased, no matter how hard they try.
You write well, Chris. I enjoy reading these, inasmuch as I enjoy good writing. Can't say I enjoy the immediate subject matter, but it's pretty generally well worth an unflinching gaze or two.
You have a good argument to make, and you've made it. You've convinced me: as a society, we are increasingly ruled by LARPers who judge themselves and each other on essentially aesthetic criteria divorced from any original meaning of the roles they play. The symbolic superstructures of our institutions have come unmoored from their earthy foundations, and the next tectonic hiccup will render it all disjoint rubble.
It's an acute diagnosis, in every sense of the word. You've done an admirable job of describing the symptoms, over and over again, in each of these posts. Occasionally I feel like you're making progress toward discovering the root causes of this illness. (I don't mean to imply that I have those answers. I can speculate and point at things, but it's a big subject and well beyond the intended scope of this comment.) But I don't see much in the way of a cure, here. Hold the line, sure. Ridicule them whenever you can. Fair enough, but that's all pretty much the consensus position of (say) the Babylon Bee. I'm not convinced it will suffice to save us. The emperor may be naked, but his army still holds most of the pointy sticks, and they are genuinely sharp on the business end.
I hope you're working on a book. It would be a good book, maybe even an important book. But, with all your eloquent iterations over the problem, I think it's only about half written. Press on!
This is a great comment, and it points to a bunch of problems that I know about in the story I'm trying to tell. I don't have much of an immediate cure to offer, and I don't think anyone can offer it. A cure, if we manage it, will be distributed, it'll be social and cultural more than it's political, and it will take decades of slow turning through the change created by millions of individual and institutional choices.
My impression is that the ifs are bigger than anything anyone knows, right now. Among a thousand other available examples, maybe we muddle through the Covid-19 vaccine debacle, and slide away into the escape of second-generation vaccines, and there's never a reckoning. Maybe a majority of the country goes on being grateful for the mRNA vaccines, and feeling glad that government protected us by forcing people to take them. Or maybe enough people forcefully speak truth that it breaks through, we see that we've harmed ourselves, we see that arbitrary authority has harmed us, and the emergence of unavoidable truth forces a broad rethinking of the authoritarianism we've come to take for granted. Edward Dowd has been arguing that a wave of insurance industry data is coming that will switch the lights on – we'll see. But the number of possible futures is large, the questions are enormous, and contingency rules.
Right now we could tell SO MANY similar stories about contingency and forks in the road ahead. Energy, economics, the military and diplomatic power of the United States, the future of family ties and social structure: It beats the shit out of me. I see quite a few paths to darkness and collapse, and a few paths to a future I would want to live in.
This early essay was an attempt at one big piece of the root cause:
https://chrisbray.substack.com/p/the-revolt-of-the-elites
And this one was a recent attempt at a little piece of a near-term solution to the most immediate and obvious problems:
https://chrisbray.substack.com/p/go-to-hard-normal
I'll try in future posts to get at the questions you've raised. They're good questions.
As to your introductory matter, I try to avoid gums (guar, xanthan, etc.). They don't sit well with me. I find Trader Joe's is the best place to find groceries without too much stuff, at least I can usually find some things there that I tolerate well. Canola (rapeseed) oil may be fine for most people, but it doesn't go down well with my stomach. Not a fan of organic.
As to your substance I really think the rallying cry of our time is the simple question, "What is a woman?" To deny having a position on natural rights simply evades the question. A good litigator would hammer the witness with, "Do you believe all humans have certain rights? Who or what gives them these rights?" etc. until I got her real answer. "When does an individual get these rights? Do you believe that people are responsible for their own actions, or are we predestined to act as our ancestors or evolution trained us? What is the difference between a human and an animal as to rights and responsibilities?"
It's sad that we need to be asking these questions, but as I say, I think the most straightforward and simple question is, "What is a woman?" Never stop asking that. Hammer them with it.
"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Draining all meaning from every word, hollowing out all institutions and the realities are world is governed by (whether they choose to acknowledge that or not), allows anything & everything to be filled with whatever GlobalCorpInc decides the narrative must be at that moment. I fear this is literally going to drive folks mad. Humanity is being hollowed out as well, as we drift, formless, in the void. Is this the fulfillment of “You will own nothing and be happy?” To become nothing?
God created. This work being undertaken by so many forces in the world, is the evil opposite. An uncreating, if you will.
We must not let them get away with this. Stand and fill your life with meaning and purpose and anchor it to the eternal, which cannot be erased, no matter how hard they try.
"I fear this is literally going to drive folks mad."
It already is, and we seem to be at the inflection point -- the point where we have to choose between futures.
There is definitely something in the air. Is an inflection point the same as a tipping point?
Great article!
Only I don’t trust the FL guvna any more than the rest of them. He’s LARPing too, IMO.